It's another type of programming to bring viewers—and advertisers—to YouTube.

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YouTube is planning to expand the types of original content it produces to include choose-your-own-adventure style programs. According to a Bloomberg report, the Google-owned company will develop interactive content similar to Netflix's hit Bandersnatch under the leadership of Ben Relles. Previously the head of unscripted programming, Relles has been with YouTube for eight years but has just begun in his new role.

Further Reading

Since the plan is in its infancy, there's no word on what types of interactive content we could see from YouTube yet. The company has experimented with interactive advertising but has yet to introduce viewer choice into its original programming. It could be awhile before we see a choose-your-own-adventure creation from YouTube because this type of content, with multiple different options and endings, takes more time, effort, and money to produce than regular original programming.

Reportedly, YouTube's looking to bolster its original content offerings and increase ad sales by making interactive content. It's also hoping to get on the same playing field as some of its competition. Netflix's Black Mirror event, Bandersnatch, which launched at the end of 2018, was such a huge success that the company plans to develop more interactive TV series. Walmart may even get into the mix soon, as it has invested $250 million in a "joint venture" with Eko, a company that makes interactive content.

YouTube has been struggling in the SVOD space in comparison to Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and other competitors. Most of its original content lies behind YouTube Premium's $11.99-per-month paywall, which provides an ad-free viewing experience across the entirety of YouTube's site, access to YouTube Music and original content, as well as some other perks. But aside from the generally successful Cobra Kai series, YouTube hasn't produced a hit movie or series akin to Netflix's Stranger Things, Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, or Amazon's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Further Reading

YouTube has even cancelled a couple of its original shows as of late. However, the company has publicly squashed rumors that it will abandon scripted content in general. At the end of last year, reports suggested that YouTube may eventually make its originals ad-supported for non-Premium users. The company is trying to figure out the right balance of paid and free programming, and it's considering where and how to offer such content to its customers.

YouTube is expected to announce new content at its annual spring event next month.

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Valentina Palladino
Valentina reviews consumer electronics for Ars Technica, testing all kinds of gadgets with a focus on mobile devices and wearables. She has a soft spot for Chromebooks. Twitter@valentinalucia

They used to have this with annotations. Entire video communities sprouted up around it.

Then Google decided "no more annotations", and all those videos are useless now.

Beware, content creators.

This plan sounds like YouTube intends to commission production companies to create interactive programming. As long as they get paid, they probably don’t care all that much whether or not the whole concept ends up on Google’s scrap heap a few years from now.

They used to have this with annotations. Entire video communities sprouted up around it.

Then Google decided "no more annotations", and all those videos are useless now.

Beware, content creators.

This plan sounds like YouTube intends to commission production companies to create interactive programming. As long as they get paid, they probably don’t care all that much whether or not the whole concept ends up on Google’s scrap heap a few years from now.

They used to have this with annotations. Entire video communities sprouted up around it.

Then Google decided "no more annotations", and all those videos are useless now.

Beware, content creators.

Honestly Im glad annotations are gone. Im sure there was some really cool implementations, but 99.999% of annotations in video where spam that covered half of what I was trying to view. Disabling annotations became as routine as downloading chrome on a new computer.

For some reason, when a company that makes substantial profits off of ad revenue starts thinking about interactive content, I keep imagining it being a survey in disguise for better mining of behavioral data and preferences.

Probably the coolest interactive video on YouTube, thankfully it was backed up and put on Invidious. Check it out if you're interested in gaming topics like speedrunning, hacking/glitching, or Kaizo Mario / ROM hacks.

The interactivity is a secret puzzle, so here's a hint - look very closely at the manual around 1:44 into the video. Fair warning - the puzzle is quite geeky and difficult and it has a lot of layers, so if you get sucked in, you'll be spending at least a few hours trying to finish it. There's really nothing on YouTube like it though, it's one of my favorite videos.

I am really surprised with all the engagement that these companies are getting or think they will get from interactive content. I mean, Netflix says it was a huge success, but I am not sure how much of it was from being Black Mirror and how much was from it being a "novelty".

I may sound old-school, but I play games when I want to interact and I watch videos when I do not want to interact with stuff.

It would be nice if they could share their interactive content as simple videos too

Most of its original content lies behind YouTube Premium's $11.99-per-month paywall, which provides an ad-free viewing experience across the entirety of YouTube's site,

An ad-blocker fixes this issue very well for free.

Which is why the upcoming Chrome API Manifest V3 will limit adblockers to a list of 30 domains or some other arbitrarily tiny number. Luckily only chromium based browsers will be impacted, which after MS's edge change is 99% of the internet. Dont worry, 3ms delays in page loads caused by long block filters will be a thing of the past. Welcome the 3000ms delay of ad loads.

They used to have this with annotations. Entire video communities sprouted up around it.

Then Google decided "no more annotations", and all those videos are useless now.

Beware, content creators.

This plan sounds like YouTube intends to commission production companies to create interactive programming. As long as they get paid, they probably don’t care all that much whether or not the whole concept ends up on Google’s scrap heap a few years from now.

What about the rest of us, and preserving art in general?

You shouldn't rely on a for profit company providing a free service if preservation is your goal.

It was the same with the choose your own adventure books. Any choice that wasn't the canon and intended choice led to some type of death. The problem with such books, movies, and games is that the more choice is on offer, the more outcomes expand and need to be addressed. If you truly and uniquely address every choice, you'd never finish the work. So what you get are a lot of mundane choices that have no real effect, followed by a few limited endings, or one ending and everything else leading to death. Sometimes it's better to just weave a single and exceptionally well done narrative than try to provide the illusion of choice.

Most of its original content lies behind YouTube Premium's $11.99-per-month paywall, which provides an ad-free viewing experience across the entirety of YouTube's site,

An ad-blocker fixes this issue very well for free.

I don't agree to this, actually.I feel that it is ok to block ads when the platform does not provide a way to block ads, and the ads are intrusive. I still dont block (I dont consider ads as too much of a hassle), but I feel it is fine to do so.

But, when they provide a mechanism to do so (Youtube Premium), then I dont think it is correct to block the ads (from a purely ethical perspective). How will the platform make money? How will they pay the content creators?

It was the same with the choose your own adventure books. Any choice that wasn't the canon and intended choice led to some type of death. The problem with such books, movies, and games is that the more choice is on offer, the more outcomes expand and need to be addressed. If you truly and uniquely address every choice, you'd never finish the work. So what you get are a lot of mundane choices that have no real effect, followed by a few limited endings, or one ending and everything else leading to death. Sometimes it's better to just weave a single and exceptionally well done narrative than try to provide the illusion of choice.

Whoa </neo>

I used to love the choose your own adventure books. It never occurred to me that they were implicitly enforcing a specific world view through the choices offered and the results of those choices. It seems obvious in hind-sight. As I got older, I would read them recursively to explore all the options and was disappointed at how short the "correct" story was (and there were very rarely two or more happy endings). Most of the book is dedicated to shutting down "incorrect" choices.

It was the same with the choose your own adventure books. Any choice that wasn't the canon and intended choice led to some type of death. The problem with such books, movies, and games is that the more choice is on offer, the more outcomes expand and need to be addressed. If you truly and uniquely address every choice, you'd never finish the work. So what you get are a lot of mundane choices that have no real effect, followed by a few limited endings, or one ending and everything else leading to death. Sometimes it's better to just weave a single and exceptionally well done narrative than try to provide the illusion of choice.

Whoa </neo>

I used to love the choose your own adventure books. It never occurred to me that they were implicitly enforcing a specific world view through the choices offered and the results of those choices. It seems obvious in hind-sight. As I got older, I would read them recursively to explore all the options and was disappointed at how short the "correct" story was (and there were very rarely two or more happy endings). Most of the book is dedicated to shutting down "incorrect" choices.

This has similar implicit concerns with respect to "open" RPGs.

That is merely one way to do branching, definitely not the only one. You can almost immediately terminate each branch with some sort of "game over", or you can almost immediately fold it right back into the main narrative with negligible / no lasting consequences at all, sure. But you can also develop at least several different, meaningfully branching story lines, handling any further choices through one of the previous options. Yes, this certainly takes a LOT more work but it's definitely doable and is actually being routinely done in some visual novels. It does translate rather poorly to adventure books due to space constraints, so I'm not surprised those mostly chose to pursue a single branch or two.

With RPG style games, you don't even necessarily have to linearly create each and every separate path - just cook up a large bunch of loosely-related quests (making sure to lock out the more egregious inconsistencies) then let the stat system do its thing, and evaluate at the endgame into several significantly different endings - although it's a bit on the nose when this is literally done at the absolute last minute; I'm looking for a proper storyline even if a short one, not an epilogue...

Most of its original content lies behind YouTube Premium's $11.99-per-month paywall, which provides an ad-free viewing experience across the entirety of YouTube's site,

An ad-blocker fixes this issue very well for free.

I don't agree to this, actually.I feel that it is ok to block ads when the platform does not provide a way to block ads, and the ads are intrusive. I still dont block (I dont consider ads as too much of a hassle), but I feel it is fine to do so.

But, when they provide a mechanism to do so (Youtube Premium), then I dont think it is correct to block the ads (from a purely ethical perspective). How will the platform make money? How will they pay the content creators?

Most of its original content lies behind YouTube Premium's $11.99-per-month paywall, which provides an ad-free viewing experience across the entirety of YouTube's site,

An ad-blocker fixes this issue very well for free.

I don't agree to this, actually.I feel that it is ok to block ads when the platform does not provide a way to block ads, and the ads are intrusive. I still dont block (I dont consider ads as too much of a hassle), but I feel it is fine to do so.

But, when they provide a mechanism to do so (Youtube Premium), then I dont think it is correct to block the ads (from a purely ethical perspective). How will the platform make money? How will they pay the content creators?

+1

I'm told that advertisers affect me whether I realize it or not; that their craft is subtle and psychological. Then I'm told the methods they use to deceive, and in my experience I have never once fallen for any of them, or even been mildly misled. Perhaps when I was a child maybe? I'm pretty deeply cynical of commercials in the first place though, and generally detest being "sold to".

So here's the thing. In principal I agree, they need to make money, and advertisers are how they do it. But, I don't think I really apply to this metric at all. Commercials just don't work on me. I have a zero-click-through rate. I've never clicked on an ad banner or "called my doctor to find out more", so frankly, I'm not affecting Youtube's bottom line whether I see the ads or not. I don't exactly know what method they can use to determine if I watched the ad though. I suppose that could be spoofed easily enough though, right?

Choose your own adventure books have always been a favorite of mine and Netflix's Bandersnatch proved that the format works just as well through video. Allowing the audience to make choices that directly impact the story brings entertainment to the next level and provides a longer lasting experience in comparison to a straightforward film. While interactive videos don't work in every situation, at a movie theater I would rather just watch the movie that was made, I think that YouTube is the perfect place to continue this trend. It provides a format that supports short interactive stories which work better than feature length films at allowing viewers to understand the consequences of their choices.YouTube is getting left behind by the other entertainment companies when it comes to scripted content. Making more interactive videos would draw in more audiences who are looking for something more than just a video to watch. Interactive content also encourages multiple viewings of the same story, allowing YouTube to get more views for the videos they produce.If they want to continue their YouTube Red shows, creating an interactive television show would be a new frontier that would draw viewer in for the novelty of it alone.

Choose your own adventure books have always been a favorite of mine and Netflix's Bandersnatch proved that the format works just as well through video. Allowing the audience to make choices that directly impact the story brings entertainment to the next level and provides a longer lasting experience in comparison to a straightforward film. While interactive videos don't work in every situation, at a movie theater I would rather just watch the movie that was made, I think that YouTube is the perfect place to continue this trend. It provides a format that supports short interactive stories which work better than feature length films at allowing viewers to understand the consequences of their choices.YouTube is getting left behind by the other entertainment companies when it comes to scripted content. Making more interactive videos would draw in more audiences who are looking for something more than just a video to watch. Interactive content also encourages multiple viewings of the same story, allowing YouTube to get more views for the videos they produce.If they want to continue their YouTube Red shows, creating an interactive television show would be a new frontier that would draw viewer in for the novelty of it alone.

This "next level" was reached ages ago with Dragon's Lair. Interactive movies have been around for a long time.